


Interviewing is not a democratic art

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [140]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gender Issues, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24213823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Leo and his many boyfriends (and girlfriend) have finally tied the knot. A journalist from the The New York Times asks to interview them to find out how the first polyamory First Family really operates, and President Walker is more than happy to accept. Unfortunately, he gets stuck in a meeting and it'll be the rest of the family to introduce itself.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Leoverse [140]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541





	Interviewing is not a democratic art

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Scenes from a Wedding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3262538) by [Tabata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata). 



> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> In this particular instance of the universe, a decades or so ago a very conservative party took all power in its hands and sent the USA back in time to some sort of New Middle Age in which all LGBTQIA community has been erased, and the people who weren't killed for trying to defend their rights were deported into ghettos kept apart from the rest of the city by huge, thick walls. When Leo was a child, he once crossed one of these walls together with his best friend Adam, meeting Cody, a genderfluid kid, and Blaine, his tutor and teacher. They quickly became friends, but they were separated when Cody was deported once again.  
> A few years later, Leo meets Blaine again, and he introduces him to the Rebellion, now led by Adam, a secret movement that aims to get rid of the present government to make the USA a better place again. Cody is part of the movement too, and is now in a very complicated relationship with Adam himself. However, Leo manages to win his heart back again, and start a polyamorous relationship with him, Blaine and his own fiancée, Meredith.  
> This story is reasonably set after "Scenes from a wedding".
> 
> written for: LDF's Esploratori del Polyverso (Chapter 0.3)  
> prompts: Rating: SAFE | warning: Alternate Universe | genre: Romance + it had to be inspired/contain the following quote: “We're WASPs. Not acknowledging the elephant in the room is what we do best” (Desperate Housewives) + the fanwork had to be set in the United States.  
> Yes, they were a lot.

The house is an absolute mess, which wouldn't be that big of a deal for a family of five that just moved in a couple of weeks ago, if the house wasn't actually _The White House_ and they weren't the Presidential Family.

The wedding was a great affair, despite Adam trying very hard to keep it contained. He wanted it to be an example of a non-traditional family, sure, but he dreamed of a simple ceremony with as few people as possible – which was a delusional thought to begin with since the bride and _grooms_ , plural, were already a crowd – that would attract the right amount of media, but without being a great hollow spectacle drawing attention away from the work-of-God he was actually doing in rebuilding this messed up Country from scratches.

Two were the things he didn't take into proper consideration. 

One, he was the _actual_ President of the United States, regularly elected – not the former head of the rebellion turned self-proclaimed ruler ad interim he had been for the first year after the power grab anymore. People were excited for him, they were invested in his love story with Cody _and the others_ as much as they were invested in the four-year long plan he had for the Country. They followed every detail of his complicated relationship as if he was an actor or a TV personality. It was not ideal, but the fact that he was so loved was a good thing. He couldn't disappoint the people he had fought so much to include in everything with a wedding behind closed doors.

Two, Cody had been buried in a ghetto for most of his life – locked away in a two room house he didn't even have a key for – and he wasn't going to marry in secret. He _demanded_ the spectacle. He specifically asked for grandeur, exaggeration, extravaganza, and a $4,000 tailor-made wedding dress that he personally designed. He was the one who wanted the press present, who made a very long list of notable guests and made sure that they were all there. If the world so far had pretended he didn't exist, everybody was going to be well aware that he was alive and well, and the damned First Genderfluid Partner of the first ever bisexual polyamory POTUS.

The wedding was such a big thing – followed by an equally huge honeymoon – that the whole moving in into the White House was postponed to a later moment for practical reasons. In fact, it was unthinkable to start such a monumental endeavor right after going through the previous one. Someone's nervous breakdown was around the corner, and nobody wanted that.

This is the first reason why the place is still overrun by cardboard boxes. The second is that they are all lazy and nobody ever wants to use what little free time they have to tidy up the place. Even the part of the building that is not _technically_ their house is still halfway through renovations, making everything even more chaotic.

Despite that, when the request came for an interview, Adam said yes right away, because showing his polyamory family off to the people was more important to him than revealing how messy said family is. He's obsessed with openness and honesty, with being a genuine leader and reassure people that he is, in fact, still the rebel that led them all to safety and freedom. 

They have been described as _informal_ , after all, and Adam likes the word at lot – it's in tune with the way he sees himself and his government's style – and apparently nothing says informal more than receiving a journalist of The New York Times in a living room invaded by cardboard boxes.

*

Melissa Holmes – the girl who's responsible for the President's schedule, for anything that is even remotely related to his public appearances and all presidential protocols of which nobody else knows anything at all – doesn't exactly agree with this philosophy.

Melissa is Adam's personal assistant or, as everybody knows her, the poor soul in charge of forcing Adam to attend his many daily appointments instead of wandering off to talk to someone (anyone) in need or to fight for a new cause, despite the fact that he just finished fighting for an entire country and could focus on that without being considered lazy.

Melissa was one of the many secretaries among the former President's entourage, but Adam didn't send her away, as he did with most of the White House's former personnel, because she lost a brother to the discriminatory laws and both her parents as a consequence of that. She had no love for her employers and was more than happy to stay and assist Adam in destroying what they had done.

Additionally, she is very good at her job and she knows a thing or two about presidency that Adam, being the great rebel hero that he is, totally ignored, so that is good. Adam is really grateful to have her at his side – despite her constant nagging about this or that commitment that he supposedly has at every given hour – and he's really sorry that he can't give her back her brother as he did with Casey. Unlike Cody, who had a few guardian angels to protect him, Melissa's brother didn't and he disappeared in the ghetto as if he hadn't existed at all. Either he died or he was deported, there are no documents tracing his movements.

Adam will keep searching for him, obviously, but the chances of finding out what happened to him are close to zero. And like him, thousands of other people just vanished from existence. The absence of any records will probably make it impossible to know their real number.

“Mister Arlington,” Melissa comes down the stairs with her best smile, a pair of 4 inches stilettos on which she magically manages to balance herself and a pile of folders in her hands. “Melissa Holmes, I'm President Walker's personal assistant. I'm sorry for having you wait in the atrium for so long. We are a little behind schedule.”

James Arlington stands up from the nice little couch he was invited to sit upon arrival, which incidentally is also right in front of the rebellion's manifesto that President Walker hanged the moment he set foot inside the White House. It was an interesting and inspiring reading. “Oh, nonsense, last time I was here they made me wait in an empty room,” he shakes her hand. “Everything is fine, I hope.”

Melissa tries very hard not to roll her eyes and fails. “We are a little behind schedule,” she confesses, as she does at least five times a day.

“Is the President going to be there?” Arlington asks following her down a hall. He was told President Walker was going to be present, but the man had to reschedule several interviews lately. So it wouldn't be surprising – although disappointing – if he gave priority to something else.

“Oh, absolutely,” Melissa nods. “He's looking forward to this interview. He's being held but he will join you later. Mister Karofsky will do the honors.”

“Lovely,” Arlington smiles at her as they reach a double door at the end of the hall. Karofsky is quite an interesting figure to him. He seems to be the head of the polyamory family as a group, but he acts as a second partner to Walker – as a unity – since Petersen is, without a doubt, the first one. This seems to call for two different levels of relationships which is one of the things he wants to investigate.

Melissa opens the door and he takes a few steps inside. The room is already crowded with the considerable number of family members. Meredith – daughter of Duncan Sanders, former congressman, who died in the first real rebel attack that led to the coup – is sitting on an armchair near the window. She shares her hair color with President Walker, as they are the only two blondes in the family, but she's got a nice primacy, she is the only woman.

Blaine Anderson, the oldest of them all, President Walker's mentor and virtually Cody's father – which will make for a very interesting question later on the interview – is standing right behind Meredith's armchair. He's a very handsome man with a fascinating past in both the school system and the rebellion, which surely gives him cause to be working in the Department of Education, side by side with the new Secretary, for whom he's currently acting both as an assistant and an advisor.

On the couch, sitting very closely – and apparently kissing, God bless them – there are Cody Petersen and Leonard Karofsky, first and second husband of the President. As one of the lucky survivors of the ghetto, the former embodies all the victims of the past government and he's now devoting his time to work with children, teens and their families to work out the many nuances of the gender spectrum that were obliterated by the conservatory party. The latter is a lawyer, a civil rights activist and the current President's official spokesperson for family affairs.

If Arlington was one to think badly, he would say Walker put together a tactical team more than a family.

“Mister Karofsky,” Melissa clears his throat, announcing her presence, “this is mister Arlington, he's here for the interview.”

Karofsky looks up and smiles at him, an open, genuine smile with not an ounce of embarrassment, that takes Arlington by surprise. “Mister Arlington,” he stands up and shakes his hand. “I'm Leo, nice to meet you.”

“Please, call me James.”

“You caught me doing what I do most of the time,” Leo keeps smiling as he gestures Arlington towards the only other empty armchair. “It's pointless to deny it as it will come out anyway sooner or later.”

“I don't think there's still a single person in this country anymore who doesn't know you are a big fan of PDA, Leo,” Blaine joins in, smiling too. And yet, in open contrast to what he just says, the man leans forward and kisses him on top of his head. “You have to excuse him, James. He gets overly excited around any of us, but especially Cody.”

“If you say it like that, he'll get the wrong idea,” Leo says. “I'm just not afraid of any display of affection. I was constantly told not to show emotions while I was growing up. I was always too emotional, too affectionate, too soft. So now I'm proudly all those things.”

“It's a nice thing,” Arlington says, setting the recorder on his phone. “And I'm glad that you're willing to share that part of you. I don't want this interview to be political, I want it to be personal.”

“Then we are on the same page.”

“Let's start from the beginning, shall we?” Arlington clears his voice and takes a look to his notes. “So, you are the one who started it all, right? You and Meredith are the original couple.”

“Mh,” Cody shifts, folding his right leg underneath his body.

Arlington turns to look at him. “Did I get it wrong?”

“Let's just say that there are multiple original couples,” Cody explains. “That's the whole point of why there are five of us.”

Leo chuckles. Cody is rarely jealous – that's Leo's thing – but when he is, he's always very direct about it. “I met Cody first when we were about five and I instantly fell in love with him,” he steps in, shamelessly. “For the next three years I was totally obsessed with him. The only thing I really wanted was to be with him and have tea parties with his dolls, make him laugh telling him stories about princess and pirates, have him paint my nails glittery purple—“

“And I always had to make sure to clean them before you left,” Blaine says, “so you wouldn't be punished or worse.”

“Because you were Cody's teacher,” Arlington reminds himself.

“He was everything,” Cody says. “After they took me away from my family, he was the only person I had left. When they took me to the ghetto, he insisted to come with me to make sure I was treated fairly. I wasn't, but at least he gave me the tools to survive it.”

Arlington notices the affection in the look Cody and Blaine share. “And you didn't know where he went?” He asks Leo.

“No. I was eight and I had no idea what the ghetto was. I learned later, but I never thought Cody could be there. The way I was brought up kinda made me ignore a lot of things and take for granted a lot of others. I never really forgot him, but life got in the way. I was growing up and there were things that were expected of me. I had a lot of things going on in my life, I had responsibilities—“

“I was your main inconvenience,” Meredith chuckles.

“You were,” Leo agrees, but then he looks at her with such warmth that it's impossible not to see that he loves her. It's a different kind of love, though, Arlington thinks, compared to what he saw in his eyes for Cody. “Meredith and I met at one of those Youth Balls organized by the government that were mandatory for you between the age of 14 and 17. She was basically assigned to me upon entry by the official that was in charge that night, an obnoxious small lady named Gladys—“

“—Gladys,” Meredith says at the same time. “Yeah, she was nasty. She took us girls aside, before the boys arrived, and basically told us to be extra careful because we could get very pregnant very fast, and it was going to be our fault if we ended up ruined. She wasn't so straightforward, but that was the gist of her speech.”

“Nobody gave _us_ boys that speech, of course. We were only given the name and the basic info of the girl we were going to meet. I should have been happy that I had been matched with congressman Sanders' daughter, but the truth was that I didn't want to be there and being Meredith Sanders' date was only going to be more responsibility and more pressure. She didn't want to be there either, so the first couple hours were really awkward.”

“He was _soooo_ serious,” Meredith rolls her eyes. “He was barely talking, and most of the time it was to ask me if I wanted something to drink or if I wanted to sit down. He asked me, like, five times in an hour.”

“I was taught not to talk too much and to make sure you were okay,” Leo chuckles. “Also, I didn't know you and I was pretty sure we had nothing in common. She was the daughter of a congressman, my dad was a high school PE teacher. I was there only because my grades were very good and I was _promising_. I was basically a pet project: let's introduce a downtown boy into high society and see what happens! Anyway, when we realized neither of us wanted to be there, everything changed. We sneaked out of the ballroom with a couple of beers, which weren't proper for _her_ to drink, by the way, and we spent the rest of the night talking.”

Meredith rests her head on her crossed hands and looks at Leo with pure amusement in her eyes. “That was the very first time we sneaked out from a place.”

“Yes, and then we proceeded to sneak out from anywhere else,” Leo confirms again. “But we made sure that we were back at an appropriate time, pretending we had just been around the room somewhere the whole time.”

“So it wasn't exactly love at first sight,” Arlington says.

“No, but I remember very clearly the moment I fell for him completely,” Meredith smiles, stealing a loving glance at Leo. “We had been going out for a couple of months, maybe three. He had already met my parents, and that's a whole other story, and they trusted him, so we were finally allowed to go out alone. I was actually excited, because I had enough of spending my time in ballrooms chaperoned by government officials. He came pick me up and waited for me outside my house next to his car. I was dressed like I was supposed to be dressed, with my pretty dress, my prudish shawl over my shoulders and these 5” heels that I hated, because I couldn't walk on them and they hurt my feet. Well, I got to the car, he opened the door for me, waited for me to be seated, all under my dad's scrutinizing eye. Leo was perfect. He did everything by the book. Then he started driving, we turned the corner and he stopped again. And he presented me with a pair of tennis shoes my size, pants and a t-shirt and he said, “I know you hate that outfit. You can change in the back, I promise I won't look”. I was speechless. Literally speechless. I looked at him and I thought: it's him, I'm going to marry him.”

“I didn't know that,” Blaine blinks several times. “So there has been a time in your life when you were romantic!”

“I still am,” Leo protests.

“I don't know about that,” Cody frowns, a little jealous perhaps. “I'd like to tell you what was the most romantic thing you did for me in the past two months but I don't want that to be on the records and you don't want that either.”

Arlington chuckles. “So, it was you two against the established order.”

“Something like that,” Leo nods. “I would provide her with comfortable clothes she wasn't supposed to wear and she allowed me to be myself, which meant being silly and crying and not having to be in charge if I didn't want to. I wasn't tortured or persecuted like Cody and so many others were, of course I was lucky and healthy and I wasn't lacking anything, but I was not happy in the life I was living. She made me a little happier.”

“Then there was the rebellion, and you met Cody again,” Arlington goes on. “You fell in love with him all over again.”

“Yes, and he casually forgot to tell me about Meredith,” Cody snorts.

“I didn't forget,” Leo protests. “I was waiting for the right time.”

“Sure, as if it was ever going to be a right time in the midst of a rebellion,” Cody rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I think he was already having an affair with Blaine by that time, am I right?”

“We had kissed a few times, yes,” Blaine confirms with an amused smile. “But the moment he saw Cody, the rest of the world simply stopped existing. His vision zeroed in on his face and we were suddenly all just flickers of memories in the back of his head. I'm sorry Meredith, but this is the truth.”

“Oh, don't worry, I know how his brain works,” Meredith says. “He loves us all to death, but one at the time.”

Arlington thought it was going to be harder to make them talk about themselves and their personal lives – prominent people usually are reluctant to reveal such details – but, given the chance to speak, this lot is very willing to do just that, so much so that he actually needs to rein them in if he wants to go anywhere with this interview. “So, to summarize, you were together with Meredith, had an affair with Blaine and you had rekindled the flame with Cody who, at the time, was with Adam, correct?”

“Adam and I had... something,” Cody sighs. “Not exactly a relationship, not exactly friendship. We kinda were in between. It took the end of the rebellion and me living with Leo for me and Adam to take the extra step and become a thing.”

Arlington nods, looking at some notes he took while they were talking. “So for a while, Leo, you and President Walker had the same boyfriend.”

“He was _temporary_ President, but yes.”

“And how did you deal with that?”

“Poorly,” Cody interjects, chuckling. “They were both incredibly stupid. Too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say. Sometimes they still are pretty childish with each other. Yes, the President is childish, you can write that. But they've come a long way. They're capable of very nice gestures together.”

“The situation was peculiar. At least a few years ago it was,” Arlington says. “There weren't many groups like yours. And, as far as I understand it, you weren't all together. You, Leo, had a relationship with everybody but Adam. Adam had no relationship with anybody but Cody. There were, at least from the outside, two separated groups, one pivoting around Leo and the other around Cody. So, how and when exactly did you all take the decision of marry?”

“ _We_ didn't,” Adam's voice comes from the door, and they all turn to find him hiding behind two humongous bouquets. “That was totally my idea. Sorry I'm late. I had two meetings that became three while I wasn't looking.”

He enters the room, followed by Melissa holding two other bouquets of a more standard size. Adam delivers the first giant one too Cody and gives him a show-stopping kiss that forces an incredibly inappropriate moan out of Cody's lips. Then, while Cody is still trying to make sense of his world again after one of Adam's killing kisses, Adam delivers the second giant bouquet to Leo and he kisses him stupid too.

“Today is only Leo and Cody's and mine anniversary, hence the flowers,” he explains. Then he grabs the smaller bouquets from Melissa's hands and proceeds to give them to Blaine and Meredith too, whom he both kisses on the cheek. “But I brought flowers to Meredith and Blaine too because, in some capacity, they are part of our threeway too.” 

“Oh good Lord, I hope not,” Blaine says, comically appalled.

Adam chuckles. “Let me explain. When I realized that I wanted to marry Cody, I also realized that in my mind Leo was automatically part of the deal. And when I thought about Leo, Meredith and Blaine were in that package too, and if I looked deep inside of me, I wasn't bothered. In fact, I kinda wanted to marry them too. Do I love Meredith the way I love Cody or Leo? No. Do we lust over each other? No. But would I die for her or Blaine? Yes. Do I love them? Yes.” He sits down next to Meredith that bumps her shoulder against his. “This is what I'm trying to convey to the people about polyamory. We needed to make laws, of course, because we wanted relationships to be regulated. It's part of the deal, isn't it? We want to be recognized, we want rights and those come with duties, and that's okay. Laws had to be made. Those we have right now are good, but they will need to be tweaked, and I'm not talking about exceptions. I'm talking about trying to consider as many groups as possible. It's not a one-time thing, it's a process. And that's because polyamory is not just one kind of arrangement. It can be something like we have and it can be something totally different. I understand that laws have to be clear, and we're working on that, but I also want to protect everybody, so I'm working on that too. My idea is to recognize love in every form, the laws of this Country will have to grow and mutate according to reality, not the other way around.”

“Adam, your rally-obsession is showing,” Leo snorts.

“I'm sorry,” Adam smiles, looking anything but. “I didn't want to monopolize the conversation.”

“Oh, you did,” Cody mocks him. “But that's okay, we're used to it.”

“Actually,” Arlington clears his throat and looks up at them. “This speech, an exceptional one, by the way, mister President, gives me the chance to acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room, which is of course the fact that Blaine was, and I assume still is, a sort of father figure for Cody. And yet they're legally married now.”

A heavy and quite irritated silence falls in the room. Surprisingly, Leo is the only one who doesn't get mad. “We're upper-middle class now, mister Arlington,” he says ironically. “Not acknowledging the elephant in the room is what we do best.”

“Yes, but you must agree that it is unsettling.”

“I don't have to agree to anything,” Leo keeps smiling, but his smile changes. It suddenly shows that he's being patient but he won't be for long. “It is what it is. Father figures are not fathers. Do you have other questions?”

Arlington could insist, but he's not here to fight.

He nods and the interview goes on, the mood a little heavier but not dramatically so.


End file.
